MATHATHA TSEDU | Impotent state and the plight of migrants

What kind of Mickey Mouse country have we become that we allow one man and his bheshu to plunge the country into a crisis of billion-rand proportions while we look on?

How is it possible that a country with a functioning government allows this one-man-and-a-woman team to precipitate the human rights crisis and degradation of African people that has unfolded in front of our eyes in the streets and parks of eThekwini?

Does one’s right as a citizen to protest against a genuine societal problem and the failure of a government to manage immigration give one the right to abuse others in such a way that scared fellow-human beings now huddle in the open as their worth as people is trampled in the name of ridding the country of illegal and/or undocumented African migrants?

Nkosikhona Ndabandaba and Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leaders of March and March, have been given free rein to terrorise people by staging marches and physical intimidation, by getting acres of space in newspapers and hours of radio and TV airtime, and through the use of unregulated digital platforms.

The result has been scared families, including pregnant women, running from their ramshackle abodes with bundles of their worldly possessions on their heads and toddlers in tow, heading for open spaces where they have lived for weeks, trusting in the safety of numbers.

Some, like Nigerian citizens, have camped outside and inside their embassies, demanding to be flown home. Malawians in particular, and some Zimbabweans, have piled into buses that now ply the N1 north route under police escort.

The ability of Ndabandaba and Ngobese-Zuma to act with seeming impunity has raised questions about how they are funded and why the state seems helpless in stopping them

I have written here before that this seemingly well-funded pair and their swanky T-shirts, placards and banners and media conferences in high-end hotels are exploiting the genuine grievances of besieged communities at the bottom of the social ladder.

I have pointed out before that the crisis was precipitated by faulty immigration policies, the failure of the government to implement even those inadequate policies, and an immigration system that is riddled with corruption at border entry points and home affairs offices across the country.

The recent SIU investigation into home affairs has confirmed that visas were and are being sold to immigrants. The public protector investigation into state capture showed how, thanks to this corruption, the Guptas were able to bring in foreigners to work at their media outlets.

All of that and more cannot justify allowing a group of people to dehumanise others as is happening in KwaZulu-Natal in particular. The ability of Ndabandaba and Ngobese-Zuma to act with seeming impunity has raised questions about how they are funded and why the state seems helpless in stopping them.

Ngobese-Zuma’s participation in a US-sponsored training programme about three years ago, whose syllabus included “countering illegal immigration”, has now been raised as a possible explanation of what is being classified as a destabilisation campaign against the country.

In line with this thinking, it is alleged the state department in Washington has called in its favour and requested or ordered a campaign that will distract the government from its stance on Israel and create a hypocrisy narrative that while it is crying foul about Palestinians far away it is ignoring its own citizens at home.

Whether this is true is not the point; the point is the inability of the government to stop this mayhem. Undocumented immigrants, from wherever they come, are people, and their dignity should be protected by a government whose constitution is based on restoring and upholding the human dignity of all.

Of course no-one can argue for unregulated inward migration. There is no government or society that would allow that. The Nigerian government is, as we speak, rounding up undocumented immigrants from Niger, Ivory Coast and other places. A few years ago, it sent millions of Ghanaians home, despite most of them being legal residents.

Ghana has done the same. Botswana established Dukwi refugee camp, the ANC in exile had the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania, and Mozambique had Nyadzonya in Manica province for Zimbabweans fleeing the Smith regime.

These were state-controlled initiatives, not marauding gangs of militias spreading terror in a country where the government is so weak-kneed all it can do is police the chaos and implore humanitarian organisations to help ease the pain. The government needs to deal with the agitation that creates the chaos, and with our porous borders.